


bad business

by paprikadarling



Category: 30 Rock
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, They don't get together, nostalgic, the writing version of this emoji: :/
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 20:51:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7330225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paprikadarling/pseuds/paprikadarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>jack and liz's relationship is made for good business. jack wonders whether business is worth it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bad business

**Author's Note:**

> i know 30 rock ended three years ago but i felt inspired and so i wrote this little ill-fated jack/liz fic. ive always been intrigued by jack & liz's strange little relationship, so i wrote about it, surprised to find that i couldn't bring myself to get them together romantically, even in the end. so, i guess look at this as an in depth confirmation of the feelings jack & liz were too smart to acknowledge.
> 
> thanks for reading!

Jack is a _businessman_ , dammit- he’s programed himself to make important financial decisions faster than his new corporate elevator can climb 50 floors, able to get the advantage in negotiations like they’re playing pin the tail on the donkey and he has his _eyes open_ , and is so unreachable that most lawsuits filed against him are batted down by his wall of lawyers without the news even reaching his _assistant’s_ assistant. He really is that good, he’ll say so himself, and has said so plenty of times when people ask and when they don’t. He’s said so tonight even, to Liz Lemon of all people. 

“Yeah, Jack. I know,” she says, lip curling into a not-quite-smile like she’s going to tease him. “The sky is blue, water is wet, corduroy is the sexiest fabric. And you’re a good businessman. These are things we all know.” Her glasses slip down her nose a touch as she levels him with a look. “You looking for gratification or something?”

“No, Lemon, I’m not looking for gratification, I am the Chairman of General Electric, and there is nothing more I could possibly want to gratify my talents. I am simply stating a fact, much like that the sky is blue, water is wet, and it is actually _tweed_ , that is the sexiest fabric.” Jack holds out his impeccably fitted suit sleeve to show Lemon.

Lemon quirks a brow disapprovingly, but reaches out and takes the sleeve between two fingers all the same. The slide of her unpainted fingernails ghosts across his wrist as she rubs at the fabric, and Jack ducks his head away, shocked by the contact. 

Lemon lets go and gives an unaffected shrug. “I’m still destined to fall for corduroy, but if you play your cards right I might be seduced by tweed, if the man in it is hot enough.”

Their eyes meet, and Jack has to force himself to return Lemon’s half smile and give a small chuckle. And there’s the problem right there, isn’t it- Jack has a copious amount of instincts, the gaps between which he makes up for with experience, and because of this, most of his interactions- both business and interpersonal- are second nature to him. It’s treating interactions with _intent_ that’s foreign to Jack. It’s also what makes him feel alive.

With Devon Banks, competing for the throne of NBC gave him a thrill of purpose that reminded him why he liked business so much. With CC, his forbidden democratic love affair, the sneaking around and danger that came with their political differences excited him. With Avery, he found the same rush by making it his mission to surprise the woman who anticipated his every move. With Lemon, well. 

When he raises his glass to her and says, “This tweed jacket will seduce you without even trying,” he’s not really talking about the tweed anymore.

Jack couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he started having feelings for the woman who managed to smell like fritos and vinegar no matter how many times he had Kenneth slip expensive perfume into her bottle of Mariah Carey- brand cologne. But he had always had to treat her with the kind of intent that only the most impactful people in his life demanded of him. 

The sexual tension- that he sensed straight away, and did his best to hype it up to the best of his abilities while ensuring nothing actually happened. He knows that’s good business; his favorite ways to command the best work out of his people are sexual tension, bribery, and, for the oddities with foot fetishes- leaving a decoy pair of shoes beside his desk while he talks to them from behind it. 

The problem with Lemon is that what usually came easy was hard and what usually came hard was easy. He felt the air in his carefully climate-controlled office get heated when he had barely even said a sentence to her in his sexy voice, and after he was satisfied with the level of tension, he found that turning away from her face, _her lips_ , was difficult even when she had a flake of icing on the upper one.

But he always knew that he couldn’t, not with her. Because unlike his usual brand of woman, Lemon wasn’t important in his society, and unlike Elisa she wasn’t so absurdly beautiful that her upbringing might be ignored. Lemon was his _employee_ , first of all. And second of all, in Don Geiss’ handbook _Wo, Man! A Guide to Women for Corporate Gentlemen_ , Lemon ranked at “I’d do her if there was an open bar and I could pretend I was drunk”, on the hotness level, and Jack never stooped lower than “Super hot, but a liberal”. Lemon wasn’t- isn’t- someone that he could parade as a trophy to the socialites in his circle. 

“So, it’s been four months since we’ve seen each other. What typical JackandLiz thing should we do next?” She asks. She leans back against the bar so that the two of them are shoulder to shoulder, looking out over the party in symmetrical postures. Jack’s left hand is holding his wine glass, and Liz’s right hand is holding a chicken wing from the refreshments table. Both their opposite hands hang limp by their sides between them, knuckles brushing together. 

She rips a shred of chicken off the bone and continues, chewing pensively. “Judge how much the couples in here hate each other by their body language? Go around looking for ugly paintings and point at them saying ‘that one’s you’ until I point at a trash can and you get offended and tell me this game is _stupid, Lemon, besides, if we’re playing by price then the trash can is obviously you and I’ll gladly take the guy who looks like a moose if it’s worth half a million_ -”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Jack says abruptly. “Let’s do something that we never did before as JackandLiz”

Lemon turns to stare at him. “Like what?”

“Like…” Jack closes his mouth and thinks. They’ve done this so many times, the dinners, the fancy parties, the smell of synergy, fear, and closeted politicians, Lemon spilling cocktail sauce on her nipple and Jack passing her a napkin without blinking. It was easy to ignore the part of him that was intrigued by every part of Liz Lemon when the very reason he could never go farther with her than their strange friendship was all around him. “Take me. To your favorite sandwich place. Let’s go to your territory, Lemon.”

Lemon, as usual, doesn’t pick up on Jack’s honesty like she always does when he gets close to the topic they don’t speak about. To be fair, he doesn’t know if that’s a flaw in his ability to reveal his feelings, or Lemon refusing to acknowledge his frankness. “Why would we do that? We had seven years of my territory, dummy!” She punches his arm. “Do you not remember _work_?”

“Of course I remember work, Lemon. That wasn’t your territory, that was _our_ territory. I want something that is completely, unabashedly, authentically, disgustingly Lemon. We’ve done Donaghy things, now let’s do some Lemon things. Take me. Please.”

Lemon looks at Jack curiously for a moment, and then delivers another, gentler punch to his arm. “Okay.”

\--

They end up at a Deli with shiny red booths and a name that Jack refuses to look at. For reasons that do not have to do with protecting his emotions, thank you. He doesn’t want to expose himself to whatever cruel pun of “Philly Cheese Steak” is flashing on the neon sign. The manager, who has approximately five teeth if you count the one that seems to be on his tongue, positively lit up when he saw Lemon come in, giving a mumbled, gummy, excited sound when she called for “Two number four specials, Artie- thanks” and hobbled to the kitchens.

They sat at a booth in the back corner where Lemon was seated beneath a huge painting of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles having a picnic, and Jack listened while she blabbed about how she found the place, how Artie took her ‘meatball sub virginity’, how the number four special was her first love, and then a long and graphic story about how the hot grease from a french dip dripped from the wrapping and burned her right on the-

It’s repulsive. And repulsively endearing. 

Now there’s two unnecessarily large and _wet_ sandwiches in front of each of them, and the whole table smells like fritos and vinegar. 

“This sandwich is…” he starts-

“I know, right?” Lemon interrupts through a large mouthful.

Jack smiles. 

It’s like this: Jack doesn’t remember when he went from riling her up for good business to riling her up because he couldn’t stop himself. But he knows it’s somewhere between when Lemon was a defiant employee and when she became his dearest friend, knows it started with him learning all of Lemon’s flaws for good business and ended with him learning to love her despite them. At no point during their time together did Jack’s insults to Lemon’s hair, style, or barbaric personality cease to be true opinions of his. He was just leaving out a “but I still love you” after them. 

“Look at us, busy folks who can’t see each other for four months. We should start a book club or something so we can at least see each other once a week.”

“Terrible idea. You wouldn’t read the books on time, and we’d throw off the former-coworkers-relationship balance that keeps things from being weird.”

Lemon swallows a huge chunk of meat. “What are you talking about? I would _so_ read the books on time. And we wouldn’t be weird! This,” she gestures between them. “This, is not weird.”

“This is not weird because we’re seeing each other somewhere at a prescribed event where neither of us has control over the attendance of the other. In this situation, the former coworkers can pick up where they left off and then leave each other when the event ends, bonded by the mutual habitation of a space and facilitated by the lack of autonomy they have over being in that space together,” Jack says easily. This much is obvious to him. It’s in his nature to know it. “It also works in seeing a former coworker at the grocery store, job reunions, and funerals. What throws the relationship off-kilter is when they see each other on purpose.”

“So we can’t see each other on purpose or it’ll be awkward,” Lemon repeats, skeptical.

“Or it could, per se, _leave a bad taste in our mouths_ ,” Jack corrects. “You never want to try to see a former coworker of your own fruition or else it’ll go wrong, you’ll never see them again, and your memories together will be forever tainted.”

“That’s dumb. When I miss you I’m just going to come to your doorstep.”

“And I’ll ignore you until you start yelling about having to door taken down and then I’ll have you thrown out of the building by my very large and very Russian bellhop Vladimir. Sorry Lemon, but we won’t be seeing each other on our own terms.”

“Blergh.”

Jack exhales and purses his lips. “Blergh,” he repeats.

This earns a defeated laugh out of Lemon, and they’re quiet for a minute, looking at each other comfortably.

“You know, Jack, sometimes I wonder what we would’ve been if we met under different circumstances. Did we become such good friends because of or in spite of TGS? If I were, I don’t know. Some sort of rich republican divorcee and heir to a giant maxi pad supplier company, what would…” 

She trails off, looking embarrassed.

“It wouldn’t be like that, Lemon,” is all Jack says. He doesn’t continue, but instead watches as she misunderstands his meaning and smiles dejectedly but like she knew that he would always reject her. What he doesn’t say is that he would never ask her to change for them to be together. The question is not who would have to be different, but rather how much Jack would have to give up, if just to be with Liz so she could continue being, exactly, perfectly the same. 

“It would be like- I, I’m the one who wonders. If I never went to Princeton and Harvard business school and just remained a normal, if not exceedingly attractive, middle-class working guy,” Jack says at last. He takes a deep breath. “And yes, I would like to think that we, well, we would-”

It’s looks like this that make Jack wonder why he even went for business at all. He’s good at it, yes, but looking at Lemon’s smile he can’t help being unsure if it was all worth it. Being here with her is more dangerous than he’d anticipated. He can almost see himself, sitting right here in this booth, in $20 jeans from Gap and a corduroy jacket, laughing at Liz’s sketch about trickle down economics being about urine, until they walk to their apartment and he rubs the fungus off her toes and they fall asleep on the couch even though they agreed they’d have sex tonight.

But Lemon has Criss to do that. Lemon is _married_ , and Jack has a life where he’s delightfully free of foot fungus and never in want for sex. And there it is. Even in Lemon’s territory Jack knows it’s just better this way. It’s a rather relieving revelation.

\--

They’re walking back to Lemon’s apartment before Jack can call a car to take him back to his place. Lemon’s holding the remainder of Jack’s sandwich for leftovers that Jack doubts will make it until morning when she swings around and presses her back to the front of her building, facing him. 

“I guess this is goodbye, Jack. Till the next time we run into each other.”

“Till then,” Jack says, leaning toward her. “Goodbye Lemon.”

For a moment it feels like they’re going to kiss, but they both know that can only happen once, and now isn’t the time for it. He kisses her cheek instead and she looks at his face and gives him a signature, dopey half-smile before going through the double doors into the apartment.

\--

It’s been two days since Jack last saw Lemon at that party and realized that there was no situation in which they could be together and still be satisfied with their position in life.

He runs into her at Starbucks.

“I’m only here for sentimental reasons- if I wanted an assistant to get me coffee I would have,” Jack says at the same time that Lemon says, “Did you ever have feelings for me Jack?”

The line at the coffee shop was terribly long and Jack is now absolutely assured that he hates everything having to do with the everyday life of the working class, including waiting, denim, feeling bad for homeless people, and splenda. He would have had to suffer these things if he were with Lemon, and he would never, ever, be happy in that life. 

And yet. “Did he have feelings for her” doesn’t ask whether he’d be happy .

He accepts the drink that’s a “Just fill the cup entirely with whipped cream, for a Miss yes I am an adult, shut up” from the barista and hands it to Lemon.

“Did is the wrong word,” is all he says for an answer. He brushes her hand as he passes over the drink.

Then he picks up his grande black coffee and sweeps past her, with a strange new feeling. A feeling that he anticipates will become second nature to feel when he leaves Lemon from now on. It’s a feeling of hope, that despite everything, maybe the next time he sees her, things will be different.

But he represses it. That’s just bad business.

**Author's Note:**

> if youre reading jack/liz fic after 2016, u and i are the same and u should come talk to me. im on tumblr, http://paprikadarling.tumblr.com/


End file.
